• Newsweek : ‘Mommy, I Know You’ | A feminist scholar explains how the study of girls can teach us about boys.

• The Bulletin : Better teaching for Johnny (RTF) | Are young men not as intelligent? Are boys just « crazy » and « unmotivated »? Maybe we’ve just unknowingly designed schools, behavioral expectations, and communities that are « boy unfriendly. »

• New York Times : Boys Are No Match for Girls in Completing High School (miroir) | Nationwide, about 72 percent of the girls in the high school class of 2003 — but only 65 percent of the boys — earned diplomas, a gender gap that is far more pronounced among minorities, according to a report being released today by the Manhattan Institute.

• BBC : Fewer boys managed the ‘three Rs’ | The proportion of 11-year-old boys able to read, write and do maths to expected standards in England went down this year, latest figures reveal.

• Toronto Star : Girls’ low self-esteem linked to depression (RTF) | Low self-esteem in teenagers is more likely to lead to depression later in life for girls than for boys, according to a Statistics Canada report.

• BBC : Girls’ school women ‘earn more’ | Women in their 40s who went to single-sex schools subsequently had higher incomes than those in mixed classes, a long-term study shows.

• BBC : Schools ‘too feminine for boys’ | Boys are being failed by schools because lessons have become too « feminised » in recent years, an academic is expected to warn.

• BBC : Schools warned over equality law | Schools may be open to legal action if they do not do more to help boys catch up with girls, according to a report commissioned by the Scottish Executive.

• The Boston Globe : State education tests show gaps based gender and income (RTF) | Vermont students improved slightly in math in statewide tests but education officials say the results show wide gaps among students based on household income and gender.

• University of Alaska at Fairbanks : Study: Boys trail girls in literacy scores | A new study by University of Alaska Fairbanks Professor Judith Kleinfeld indicates that boys, regardless of their socioeconomic status, lag behind their female peers in language arts.

• The Boston Globe : The lost boys (RTF) | Today, it’s the »boy crisis » that’s making headlines, from The Weekly Standard to Newsweek. We are presented with alarming numbers: 58 percent of first-year college students are female. Because male students are more likely to drop out, their share will shrink to 40 percent by graduation.

• Esquire : The Problem with Boys | …Is actually a problem with men. We’ve ignored all the evidence of male achievement and ambition deficits and stood aside as our sons have notched a growing record of failure and disengagement. It’s time we did something about it. A call to action.

• Newsweek : The Trouble With Boys | They’re kinetic, maddening and failing at school. Now educators are trying new ways to help them succeed.

• Eide Neurolearning Blog : Boys & Girls Learn Differently in the Classroom | Having a male teacher improves the performance of boys while harming girls’ reading skills. On the other hand, a year with a female teacher would close the gender gap in science achievement among 13-year-old girls by half and eliminate the smaller achievement gap in mathematics.

• New Horizons for Learning : Male and Female Brains | Sex differences and the brain. What does it matter, you say? I think it does. Through such knowledge we will eventually be better able to understand the basis for behaviors that many now perceive as entirely rooted in social custom or familial history.

• Education.com : Are boys’ and girls’ brains different? | The most profound difference between girls and boys is not in any brain structure per se, but rather in the sequence of development of the various brain regions. The different regions of the brain develop in a different sequence, and different tempo, in girls compared with boys.

• The Christian Science Monitor : Separating the sexes: a new direction for public education? | In the past decade, single-sex schools have surged in popularity. Today, there are 25 same-sex public schools in the nation, almost all formed after 1996, according to NASSPE. Another 72 schools offer single-sex classes. And a dozen more are slated to open in the fall.

• The Journal Sentinel : Single-sex classrooms, controversy grow | Supporters of the movement cite research showing achievement gains in single-sex classrooms, different learning styles between the sexes and the importance of giving parents a range of options. Those critical of the efforts say the research is more ambiguous and that single-sex programs sometimes reinforce gender stereotypes.

• The Globe and Mail : All girls – better grades | Graduates of all-girls schools have higher SAT test scores and greater confidence in math and computer skills, concludes a new, large-scale study on single-sex learning. The 100-page paper, by the University of California, Los Angeles, Graduate School of Education, validates other research showing how single-sex education can dramatically broaden the educational horizons of graduates. However, it won’t resolve the heated debate over single-sex education, and whether it addresses inequities in education – or re-enforces gender stereotypes.

Enseignants :

• The Washington Post : Disappearing Act | The trend of females overtaking males in college was initially measured in 1978. Yet despite the well-documented disappearance of ever more young men from college campuses, we have yet to fully react to what has become a significant crisis. Largely, that is because of cultural perceptions about males and their societal role.

• The Washington Post : Mars and Venus in the Classroom | The gender gaps for children age 9 to 13 approximately double in science and reading. And by the time they’re 17, « the underperformance of . . . boys in reading is equivalent to 1.5 years of schooling, and though men continue to be over-represented in college level science and engineering, girls are now more likely to go to college and persist in earning a degree.

• EurekAlert! Women need female role models | A paper published in the latest issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly uses a two-part study to find that women benefit more than men from having same-gender examples of success.

Monde :

• BBC : Girls still miss out in schooling | The UN children’s fund, Unicef, says that out of the 115m children around the world not getting any primary school education, 90m are girls.

• EurekAlert! : Why aren’t more girls ‘geeks’? | University diplomas in computer science are overwhelmingly earned by males, according to a new study of 21 nations, but significant country-to-country differences in the gender gap imply that much more than genetics is at work.

Université :

• USA Today : As boys slip behind, some feminists reject helping them | Some feminists, concerned that what helps boys might hurt girls, are denying that a problem exists — ironically in the same reflexive way that some men repudiated attempts to help girls a generation ago.

• New York Times : At Colleges, Women Are Leaving Men in the Dust (miroir) | Department of Education statistics show that men, whatever their race or socioeconomic group, are less likely than women to get bachelor’s degrees — and among those who do, fewer complete their degrees in four or five years. Men also get worse grades than women.

• New York Times : Small Colleges, Short of Men, Embrace Football | Some small American colleges, eager to attract men to increasingly female campuses, have taken notice of how many students can be lured to attend by adding football teams. Officials at these colleges say football can bring in more tuition-paying students than any other course or activity — and not just players themselves.